Five Million Miles From Pluto

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/2015Jul8_plutoNH_nasajhuaplswri950.jpg

This image was taken on July 7th by the New Horizons spacecraft as it approached the dwarf planet Pluto. Now Horizons is set to make a historic flyby of Pluto and its moons on Tuesday. Unusual and complex structures have been can be seen on the dwarf planets terrain and are annotated in the image below.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/Pluto02_NewHorizons_1080_Annotatedb.jpg

Pluto downgraded from a planet to dwarf planet status is the 10th largest body known to orbit the sun. It orbits between 4.4 and 7.4 billion kilometers from the sun. It is composed mainly of rock and ice. Light from the sun takes about 5.5 hours to reach it at its average distance from the sun. Pluto has five known moons, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.

Sources: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150711.html , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto , http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150709.html

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So how bright is Pluto during a ‘pluto’ day. Could it be like a moonlit earth night?

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It must be very difficult for kids to learn or was it cram in school today… Siku zetu things were black and white, planets were 9 period, the smallest matter was an atom… with all the information filtering how do you test some of these things?

Mtoto akiuliza about planets… what is the answer? Google?

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I understand that from Pluto the Sun looks like one very bright star! So bright it would hurt to look at it directly with naked eyes. But it looks like a star!!!

The allure of space is real and very great to a young mind. I used to like physics and astronomy back in the day. I don’t know what happened and I fell off the bandwagon Anyway I guess its not too late for my son so when I visit my parents next weekend and I will search for a telescope that my dad gave me and pass it on to my son. He might just make something out of it.

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watoto siku hizi wako na shida sana imagine class ya kenyan history explaining hii upuzi yote tumekuwa na nayo

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@ Ganjaman …I hope all this debate on school kids does not derail your thread, Its just my modest way of showing support for post. Or even a clever or not so clever way of concealing our confusion and ignorance about space

How I yearn to lay my hands on a real telescope! I have looked forfor one with no avail! It’s hard to know where they are sold here in Kenya.

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Tuploti huko ni ngapi?

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

wabeberu yani anaamka siku moja anasema planet sio planet

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Wakanyama ako na hacienda huko na farasi za ice, labda atuambie.

:D:D

What if you keep educating yourself?

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:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

wakenya na tumbroti

:):):):slight_smile:

I don’t know how my dad got the telescope…Come to think of it. I was not an ideal son. I remember selling a pair of binoculars to get cash for raving

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Check out the image below showing the sun’s appearance in the sky from different planets.
http://i1.wp.com/astrobob.areavoices.com/files/2012/01/Sun-from-other-planets.jpg?resize=640%2C503

Even though the sun looks like a small dot in the sky on Pluto it still would shine on average 240 times brighter than the full moon on earth.

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Telescopes are expensive mainly I think because they don’t have much of a market here.

http://lavington.olx.co.ke/telescope-celestron-astromaster-iid-812685574
http://nairobicbd.olx.co.ke/telescope-new-seben-big-boss-1400150-6-reflector-iid-805291011

First time I saw a telescope was at Yaya Center when I was about 10… I wanted one so bad but I was so disappointed when I saw the price on that thing.

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth is mostly made from rock, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus :smiley: are actually mostly gas and Pluto is smaller than our moon. It’s hard to call all of them planets when they are so different. There are even scientist that argue that our moon is actually a planet because it is so much bigger compared to other planets and their moons.

Yaya Centre.

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I think everyone’s anus is mostly gas :rolleyes: